The Butterfly Effect of a Blow-Job (Revisted from December 2005) [View All]

[David Zephyr]

It's time for a serious Come-To-Jesus Meeting here at the DemocraticUnderground.Com. It's high time that a lot of us (me included) face the cold hard fact that President Bill Clinton's shabby behavior with an intern while he was President of the United States resulted in the Democrats losing control of the U.S. Senate and in losing even a greater number of seats in the House of Representatives. Most of all, Clinton's misconduct cost Al Gore an even clearer-cut victory against then Texas Governor George W. Bush in 2000.

The fact that our nation's right wing went into melt-down mode, into total hysteria in their utterly hypocritical and malicious campaign to wrongfully drive him from office through the impeachment process still does not change the simple stark truth that Bill Clinton, and Bill Clinton alone, allowed himself and the rest of us within the Democratic Party to be sidetracked from what we should have been doing into defending him.

Bill Clinton should have put the good of the nation and the best interests of his Party first and should have had the grace to have resigned his office and thereby permitted his Vice President, Albert Gore, to step immediately into the Executive role in the White House. A President Gore, with Tipper at his side, would have had all the trappings of the Executive Branch at his disposal and would have carried the 2000 election in a landslide. Indeed, had Gore become President, I doubt that Governor Bush would have run in 2000 because Karl Rove would have known better than to challenge a popular sitting President.

Al and Tipper Gore could have never been assailed for Clinton's tawdry conduct. It would have never stuck. Everyone knew that the Gores had a strong marriage, an enviable union, if there ever was one. And with out the Lewinsky stench hanging over the White House, Gore could have carried the day, perhaps in 50 states, with the nation prosperous and at peace in the world.

Instead, we had a stretched out, blood wrenching two year tug-of-war that exhausted all the political capital of the Democratic Party to defend Bill Clinton's right to be President. We never stopped to ask ourselves that old, but helpful question: Was that the hill that we all really wanted to die on? Well, we won the battle alright, but we sure as hell lost the war, didn't we?

We've lost, at minimum, two precious opportunities to nominate to the Supreme Court. We've lost millions of jobs to outsourcing. We've lost a $3 trillion Social Security surplus to a projected $10 trillion deficit. We've gone from being the champion of human rights in the world's collective eye to becoming military occupiers and the torturers of Abu Graib. We have fallen from the hope and promise of science and medicine to the backward darkness of back-wooded superstition and demagoguery. We have squandered the greatest economy in our nation's history and all the good that we could have done with it. We can't turn back time. It is what it is.

But, fellow Democrats, don’t be down heartened. Don’t despair. We can still all crow alongside Bill Clinton that we did stop the impeachment and removal of a President from office. We did win that one, didn't we? But what a price we have all paid.

The butterfly effect of a blow-job.



Original Post and Thread with all Responses from December 6, 2005: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5533003